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Foundry United Rev. |
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Sermon Series:
Christianity Without Easy Answers “What Makes
Somebody a Christian?” Sunday, February 8,
2009 |
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Acts 11: 19-26
Rev.
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Let’s look
at some of the answers that we might have heard somewhere in our past or
assumed. What
makes somebody a Christian? One answer might be that a Christian is somebody
who believes certain things, like the Apostles’ Creed or the idea that Jesus
is the messiah, or that the universe was created in six days, or that every
word of the Bible is true. This answer – that a Christian is someone who
believes certain things – has created a lot of conflict throughout the
centuries because if we assume that believing certain ideas is what makes
somebody a Christian, then we’ve got to figure out which ideas. What ideas or
doctrines are the minimal requirements to be a Christian? Lots of
people think they can’t be a Christian because they can’t bring themselves to
believe certain ideas like the Virgin Birth or the literal physical
resurrection. The problem
with this answer is that Christianity is not primarily an ideology.
Christianity is not primarily a collection of ideas. It is not primarily a
set of doctrines. There may be Christian ideologies within Christianity, but
Christianity itself is not an ideology. So believing certain ideas is not
what makes somebody a Christian. Another
answer might be that a Christians is someone who has had a certain
experience: someone who has been “born again” or converted or baptized or
confirmed. There are some Pentecostal groups who believe that a Christian is
someone who has spoken in tongues. This
answer has also been the cause of a lot of conflict within Christianity over
the centuries because, if we define Christians in terms of experience, we
have to figure out which experiences are definitive. I know an Anglican
priest from the We
Americans are particularly enamored by the idea of being born again. When I
was planning this sermon series months ago, I bought a copy of Billy Graham’s
book, written in originally in 1977, entitled How to be Born Again. I figured Dr. Graham would be the expert on
the born again experience. One of the fascinating things about Dr. Graham’s
book is that it pulls the statement “You must be born again,” out of its
context in John chapter three and never explores the complex and fascinating
conversation that led Jesus to make this statement.[i] Jesus
is talking about what needs to happen to us in order to be able to perceive
and participate in God’s presence in the world, and frankly, in this passage,
he sounds more like the Buddha than a revivalist so it is ironic that this
story has become the basis for so much of Baptism
and confirmation are precious. We put a lot of energy into baptism and
confirmation here at Foundry. But they are experiences that seek to
communicate and dramatize and make real to us realities we believe to be
already true before we do them. Baptism doesn’t cause God to love and receive
a baby or child or adult. It is a way of us trying to grasp the grace that
already is. Christianity
is an experiential religion. The experiences are sometimes inward, like the kind
of experience that Jesus called being born again. The experiences are
sometimes outward, such as rituals like baptism or confirmation. But it is
not any particular experience that makes someone a Christian. What does
make somebody a Christian? A third answer might be that a Christian is
somebody who does certain things or lives a certain way. This answer assumes
Christianity is primarily an ethic and those who live out this ethic can be
defined as Christians. This is perhaps the most appealing definition to many
of us at a mission-oriented social justice congregation like Foundry, and
there are some strong biblical supports for this understanding of what it
means to be a Christian. There is, for example, the parable of the judgment
of the nations in Matthew 25 which says whatever we do or don’t do for the
most vulnerable – the least of these – we do or don’t do for Jesus Christ and
that this is the basis by which all nations will be judged. But
Matthew 25 is talking about something larger than Christianity. Matthew 25 is
about all nations, all religions. It says that Christians will be judged by
this standard but so will everybody else. Compassion is a universal rule of
life. The
biggest problem with defining the word Christian
based on doing or not doing certain things is that the Apostle Paul and
the weight of theological thinking all throughout the history of Christianity
says that Christianity is not a religion of laws. Christianity is not a faith
that says that we are saved by good works. While Christianity’s purpose is to
help us live good lives, Christianity is not primarily an ethical code. There
are other definitions of what a Christian is. It is interesting to travel to
other parts of the world and hear other definitions of what makes somebody a
Christian. I was in So what
does make somebody a Christian? The
Book of Acts actually tells us when and where the term Christian was first used. It happened in the city of Members
of the church fled from The church
back in Acts
says “It was at When
the church was made up of people of just one ethnic and religious identity it
was not yet called Christian. It was commonly referred to simply as the Way
and the members of the movement were called those who belong to the Way. (Acts
9:2) But
when ethnic and religious Gentiles became followers of Jesus, the Way became
more confusing. Before But now,
with the addition of Gentile followers of Jesus, there were other ways to
follow Jesus. Christian practices began to become more diverse. This new
community was no longer linked by religious background, ethnicity, shared
nationality, or shared customs. Now the only thing that they held in common
was Jesus Christ. So they became known as Christians. The one thing they had
in common was Christ. Definitively,
to be a Christian has no other meaning or implications or baggage than Jesus
Christ. You first have Christians when the church becomes diverse and the
only thing that holds people together is Christ. So in a negative sense
Christians are people who, whatever else they have in common, are drawn
together only by Jesus Christ. Nothing else about us makes any of us a
Christian except for Jesus Christ. Based
on this Acts account, I want to propose this definition of a Christian. A Christian
is someone who is drawn to the story of Jesus Christ and turns toward it. The
word Christian began to be used when a diversity of people heard the story of
Jesus Christ and “a great number became believers and turned to the Lord.”
(Acts 11: 21) Christians
are people who hear the story of Jesus Christ and are drawn to it and who
respond by turning toward this story. Let me
add this: The story of Jesus Christ does not begin with Jesus’ birth nor does
it end with Jesus’ death. John says: “In the beginning was the Word…” and
“the word became flesh and lived among us.” (John 1: 1, 14) The story of
Jesus Christ begins back before creation and it continues up to this very day
and to the end of history. So to be drawn by the story of Jesus Christ does
not just mean the story we read in the four books of the Bible called
Gospels, and it does not just mean the story told within the Bible, but also
the whole history of Christianity, bad and good, up until this very day. And the
story of Jesus Christ is not just told in words. It is told in music with
lyrics or without; it is told in the drama of rites and rituals; it is told
in paintings, sculptures, and glass; it is told in architecture; it is told in
archetypal images that appear in our dreams; it is told in the lives of
ordinary and extraordinary saints whose lives have been influenced and shaped
by this story. It appears between the lines in much of the world’s great
fiction, poetry and literature. Jane
and I were visiting a United Methodist congregation one Sunday, and we heard
the pastor tell an amazing story. He shared his testimony as to why he was a
Christian and a United Methodist. He grew up in a home in the midst of great
poverty. At one point in his childhood when things were very bad at home, a
friend’s family invited him to come live with them and he did. They attended
a Methodist church. He lived with them for a long time, and then another
family in the church invited him to come live with them; later another
family. He was literally raised by a Methodist congregation. After that, I
would venture to say the verbal telling of the story of Jesus Christ was
redundant. He had experienced the story of Jesus Christ before he heard it. A Christian
is someone who experiences in some way the story of Jesus Christ and who is
drawn to this story, no matter how it is told, and who turns toward it. The story of Jesus Christ draws us in many,
many different ways. In the
Gospel of John, Jesus says to his disciples: “You did not choose me, but I
have chosen you…” (John 15: 16) Also in
John, Jesus says, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all
people to myself.” (John 12: 32) The story of Jesus Christ chooses us more
than we choose it. It draws us into itself. Sometimes
it chooses us because it is the story we grew up hearing and seeing acted out
throughout our childhood and youth. Sometimes it chooses us because we grew
up without a compelling story and it finds us at some point in our life and
draws us into itself. Sometimes we fight the story; we resist it; we rebel
against it; but it is still our story and we can’t escape from it. Sometimes
we have grown up with another story but we find this story compelling
instead. People who have grown up in other religions sometimes tell me that they
heard the story of Jesus and they knew almost instantly that this was their
story. Sometimes they saw it lived out in the life of a missionary and it
became their story. They will tell you that they did not choose the story of
Jesus Christ; it chose them. And sometimes another story chooses some of us
who have grown up as Christians as well. The
stories that we are drawn to and that we attend to are very powerful. They
may be determinative. Jane and I have been ordering the first season of the
TV show Mad Men on our Netflix
account. We didn’t know about the show until it won all sorts of awards so we
decided to get the first season that we missed from Netflix. Anyone ever
watch Mad Men? It is about a
Madison Avenue advertising agency in the 1960s. One
night we watched three episodes in a row. After three episodes of Mad Men in a row, Jane turned to me
and said, “Let’s go to the corner store and buy a pack of cigarettes.” Just
about every scene in three episodes showed people smoking. The stories we
listen to are very powerful. Maybe determinative. Stories
are very powerful. Christians are people who are drawn by the story of Jesus
Christ and turn toward it. There
are many ways to turn toward it. Some turn towards it by studying theology. I
know someone who says he became a Christian after reading the theology of
Paul Tillich. I doubt this is normative, however. I know
people who have intellectual difficulty with some of the ideas of
Christianity but who are drawn by the story of Jesus Christ as it is told in
the works of Handel and Bach and who turn toward the story of Christ in the
music they love. I know a person who has grave intellectual doubts who
listens to Gospel music every morning to begin his day. This is his way of
turning toward a story even when he finds parts of it intellectually
difficult. I have
heard the story of a person who is very active in his local church. He finds
great meaning in participating in the life of the community. He will secretly
tell you he is agnostic about “all the religious stuff,” but being part of
his congregation is his way of turning toward the story of Jesus Christ. Certainly
there are many of us who are drawn to the story of Christ who don’t manage to
live it out in our own lives very well. When Mahatma Gandhi was asked his
opinion about Christianity he famously said: "I have a great respect for
Christianity. I often read the Sermon on the Mount and have gained much from
it. I know of no one who has done more for humanity than Jesus. In fact,
there is nothing wrong with Christianity, but the trouble is with you
Christians. You do not begin to live up to your own teachings."[ii] Certainly
many of us who are Christians do not manage to live out the story of Jesus
Christ very well. Sometimes those who do not claim the name Christian have
done a better job of living out the story of Christ than those of us who do
claim the name. In the movie Gandhi there
is a humorous scene: Gandhi
and Reverend Andrews, a Christian missionary, are walking together in It is
not our intellectual grasp, our spiritual experiences, nor our morality that
make us Christians. It is our being drawn to the story of Christ and our
turning toward it. The
more we turn toward the story and listen to it and experience it again and
again in different ways – in Scripture, in the rituals of Christianity, in
the arts and music, in doing mission – the more formative it is likely to be
in our life. This is the purpose of the church – to be a people who seek to
immerse ourselves in as many ways as we can think of in the story of Jesus
Christ so that it will form our lives. There
has been a tension within Christianity almost from the very beginning as to
who is in and who is out. Something about us wants clear and clean answers
about who is in and who is out. But Christianity is not about clear answers. The
Gospels themselves demonstrate this. The
Gospel of Matthew quotes Jesus as saying: “Whoever is not with me is against
me.” (Matthew 12: 30) Mark quote Jesus as saying: “Whoever is not against us
is for us.” (Mark 9: 40) Luke quotes Jesus as saying: “Whoever is not against
you is for you.” (Luke 9: 50) Then two chapters later, Luke quotes Jesus as
saying: “Whoever is not with me is against me.” (Luke 11: 23) For the life of
me I can not figure out the difference in context, except that from the early
days of the church, Christians have had a hard time figuring out who was out
and who was in. It is
as though those who are overly confident that they are challenged in such a
way as to be made insecure and those who are insecure are affirmed in such a
way as to be reassured of their inclusion. Our
friend Mark Miller has taken a lyric written by Gordon Lightfoot and turned
it into a hymn of the church. The first verse says: “Draw the circle wide.”
The second verse says “Draw it wider still.” You sing the verses over and
over again. Draw the circle wide. Draw it wider still. Draw the circle wide.
Draw it wider still. Over and over. This
seems to me to capture the spirit of Christ. Finally, deciding who is in and
who is out isn’t up to you and me, is it? Christ chooses whom he will. The
story of Christ chooses whom it will. If they are not welcomed here, a new
community will emerge that will include whom Christ chooses – this is the
history of Methodism. If we do not welcome those whom Christ chooses we will just
become less and less relevant. If we welcome those whom Christ chooses, we
will be vital and alive. What
makes you and me Christian? Nothing we’ve done really. Something Christ has
done. By grace, the story of Jesus Christ has drawn us into itself and made
us Christians. www.foundryumc.org |
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